Freshwater Road (36 page)

"It's better not to, but if you're out there late at night, you better be
movin', and you better have a gun."

Celeste glanced over at him. His demeanor had not changed. "You don't
have a gun in this car, do you?"

Ed didn't answer her, but his eyes said that if he didn't have one now, he
would very soon. Matt had talked that way after that beating on the road
down from Jackson, embarrassed that he'd been beaten and not defended
himself, hopped up about going to meet with the Deacons for Defense
and Justice. A salve that said I am a man, too. It was the memorial service
talking through Ed, the three deaths. He needed to affirm that he would
defend himself if necessary. Be a man. She put her head back, heart racing,
tried to fake a nap.

When she opened her eyes, they were coming into Slidell, Louisiana,
heading for a bridge. Neon signs flashed "liquor" like it was being handed
out for free. People on the streets walked easy, men in shorts and women in halters strolling in and out of open-air tackle and bait shops. Negro and
white people just out lingering. The lake air mingled with a lift from the
Gulf, had a bite of coolness in it, but it was funky, too. She sucked it in like
it was a healing vapor. She wanted to stop and walk along the dirty beach.
She scanned the placid surface of Lake Pontchartrain, the crescent of land
on the other side disappearing in a low-slung layer of mist.

Ed maneuvered the car over the old bridge, the tires bumping over the
metal ridges and cross planks. Past Ed, out the other way toward Lake
Borgne and the Gulf of Mexico, a procession of white boats pointed in
toward the shore. She was thinking of a pleasure cruise, of lying on a white
deck lounger in a skimpy swimsuit with big sunglasses and a tall cool drink
close by. Escape.

"Trawlers. Been out in the Gulf. Probably got shrimp. Sport-fishing
boats, too." Ed's voice had the relaxed sound of a man at home.

"I had other thoughts," she said. She couldn't really squeeze a vacation
fantasy into her experience of the south. She remembered what Margo had
said: Down to the Gulf, it's still Mississippi, Alabama. Same damned thing.
But New Orleans had to be different. It was already different just seeing
people lazing around on the streets, going in and out of stores.

"You ever tasted pompano?" Ed said it like he knew she'd never heard
of it.

She played the student well. "What is it?"

"It's a fish." He grinned.

"What kind of fish?" She didn't feel uncomfortable letting him know
what she didn't know.

"From the Gulf. They call it Florida pompano. It's good-sweet, even."
The fishing boats trailed towards shore like toys on a city park pond. "Makes
me hungry just thinking 'bout it."

Pompano. The word had a rhythm just like Ed's way of speaking, and
she already knew he was good and he was sweet.

The easy pace of the car, the sun glimmering on the water, and the talk
of good eating reminded her of long ago summer Saturday afternoons at
Momma Bessie's. Some distant uncle who'd left in the dark to go fishing on
Lake St. Claire brought his catch to the old house. Fish scales flew around
the kitchen and the blues played on the record player. Everyone talked long
and hard about Detroit, about wherever they might've come from in the south, about jobs and houses and relatives. They drank Jack Daniel's and
Johnnie Walker Black, and the old ones drank Four Roses. Billy and she
and the cousins and the neighbor children tagged around the apple tree in
the backyard, ran in and out of the house hearing snatches of conversations
that sang like the music. The smell of frying fish devoured all the molecules
in the air. Wilamena had already left town by then.

"You gotta see this place when a hurricane blows through. Waves coming off the Gulf, water surges rolling in big as buildings over the land."
Ed half-turned to her. He always seemed to be eyeing her for a response,
listening, paying attention. He exaggerated to yank her back again from
the brink of her tumbling thoughts. She thanked him with her look, then
saw the water out the window-it barely lapped against itself, an old dog
licking a worn-out shoe.

Cars whizzed by on the bridge-no hateful-eyed stares here, just carloads of people going about their summer lives, children's faces in the windows, looking like they'd jump right out and over the bridge they were so
ready for a swim.

They left the bridge and drove through Bayou Sauvage with its houses
on stilts in the water, through the mud-slow suburbs and into New Orleans,
which simmered in an afternoon swelter so ferocious Pineyville seemed
like a cool memory. Hot air rolled in the open windows, a thick funk that
smelled like old shrimp shells. She hung out of the car window, her hair a
mass of spikes and curls.

The car slowed along with the lethargic traffic on Gentilly, the sun sharp
against the windshield on her side. Ed turned onto St. Bernard and they
passed blocks of doll-like houses with green shutters and ornate porticos.
He told her they were in the area where the black Creoles lived, mixed-race
people who traced their heritage back to the French and Spanish. In the
days of slavery, the rich young white men had kept beautiful colored women
in small houses in the French Quarter, and their children became the free
people of color, the Creoles. Many were educated in France and practiced
in all the trades and crafts at the time of slavery. Matt called Ed Creole, and
his name was certainly French, but his skin color was deep-dark.

He told her of the Negro wrought-iron workers, the musicians, the
whole society that grew up separate from African slaves and Europeans. She
was swallowed up in his talking, filling in the blanks in her mind, angry that none of it was taught in any school she'd ever been in. Those Creoles, he
told her, could be as prejudiced as white people. Wilamena would fit right
in. He pointed out Congo Square, where the slaves celebrated their free
days with festivals of food, music, and dancing and told her until this day,
you might find a plate of food under a certain tree put there to appease the
gods. Voodoo was practiced there and on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain.
His talk took her miles away from the waiting confrontations in Pineyville,
the memorial service, Wilamena's letter. A small wedge, a new landscape to
build on, and she gobbled it up for fear of the knots and rocks inside her.

Ed parked and led her into a storefront restaurant where people sat on
benches at long tables with mounds of red-shelled claw-legged things on
newspapers and bottles of beer lined up like bowling pins. The air conditioners slammed out cool air and the front door stood open. Loud pulsing
music played over the speakers, men's voices sounding earth-rich and low,
their accents so thick she couldn't make out the lyrics. It was neither rhythm
and blues nor jazz but it was black, deep black, and it sneaked into her body
as she walked behind Ed to a table. He sat her there and went off before
returning with a newspaper pouch of crawfish and a waitress behind him
carrying two frozen bottles of beer. He taught her how to crack the shells
and suck the meat out of the head and the tiny claws. She leaned against
the wall, put her feet up on the sitting bench, drank beer, and watched the
traffic go by on Claiborne Avenue, Negro people and white people both
coming into this place, both eating and drinking. Mississippi wasn't even
an hour away.

"God bless New Orleans because one more day in Mississippi, and I
might've volunteered to throw myself into the Pearl River. Do the Klan and
Sheriff Trotter a favor." Celeste swallowed a belch and heaved out a sigh that
had comfort all through it. A rich feeling of contentment, like Reverend
Singleton's at Mrs. Owens's breakfast table.

"Chere, you can't think like that. Good things going on, too." He'd
recovered from his oblique talk of guns and resumed being the nonviolent
architect of change. He leaned over his pile of crawfish, liquid drizzling
down his chin, hands breaking off the bigger pieces. She wanted to lick the
juice right off of his face. The music changed to the rhythm and blues of
Otis's jukebox in Hattiesburg.

"Shuck would love this place." She drank her beer and watched Ed rubbing lemon wedges over his hands, then drying them on napkins. People
laughed, talked, and swilled beer like it was water, nobody bothering anybody
else. "My father." The words bounced in her head, reverberated against
her skull. My father. Had Ed heard her? Or had she swallowed the words,
another expression of her confusion? Tears came to her eyes, and she looked
out the window until they returned.

Ed went through the pile of paper napkins she'd assembled from the
napkin holder. "Your pa must be a laissez-faire kinda man."

"That's a fine way to put it." She knew he was just that and to the bone,
and she worshipped every bit of that quality in him. She knew she could
rely on it to get through Wilamena's mess.

For a moment, it seemed there was no one in the restaurant but them.
She turned away from his barefaced allure, the strong pull of him making
her dizzy, the music spiraling her closer toward him, too. The memory of
making love with him in the car on Freshwater Road kept her awake nights.
She didn't know if the isolation of Pineyville was magnifying the feeling or
if it had a weight of its own that would carry no matter where they were
or what they were doing, and for the moment, she didn't care.

Back in the car, full and sleepy in the afternoon heat, rivulets of sweat
ran down her chest. The hot car seat branded the backs of her thighs
through her slacks. When she put her arm on the window casing, it was
hot enough to scorch her skin.

They drove slowly through the French Quarter, where people walked on
the streets with drinks in their hands and stood in entryways throwing up
in broad daylight. She marveled at the ironwork, the narrow French-named
streets, the balconied houses and palms growing like weeds. She'd left
America and landed on some island, a throwback place. They drove to the
foot of Canal Street to where the ferry docked and she reminded him of being running drunk and laughed. Together, they boarded, the dark currents
of the river swirling south, the white riverboats with their bright bunting
going north, great barges and cargo ships angling this way and that as they
maneuvered into the docks. New Orleans gleamed in the bright sunlight.

She'd imagined they'd be picked up in a hurricane wind and dropped in
the sea near North Africa. Instead, they bounced over the muddy currents
toward the low roofs and thick trees of another stop in America, in the
south, where Negro people talked in song.

Later, after they'd been to Algiers and back again on the ferry, a dark
cloud stopped over the French Quarter and it rained. The cloud moved on
and the sun reappeared, sheening the city in light. "This time of year, the
rain's warm, big drops and soft. Might only pour for three minutes. Maybe
rain in the Quarter and be dry as bone 'cross the river," Ed told her.

They drove to St. Charles Avenue and parked. She felt like she was
speeding through a world she had to photograph in her mind in order to
preserve a few things to dream on. The street looked wet and shiny, rich
and old; the traffic noises were like music. They boarded the streetcar and
rode all the way to Audubon Park, the grand old houses all along the way
stark white against the deep green of the sprawling magnolias and live
oaks, the fan palms and philodendrons, the pond cypress and willows,
amid splashes of color so vibrant she stared out of the open side of the
streetcar, the bell clanging and the car lurching, like a child at Christmas
gazing into toy-filled windows. The green cooled everything, held the sun
at bay. Ed took her hand when they stepped down from the streetcar and
kept holding it when they walked through Audubon Park. He leaned her
against the rough bark of a live oak and kissed her in broad daylight. She
looked up through the branches, the light of the sky in small patterns coming through the leaves; she reached for him and fell right into his chest,
holding onto him for all she was worth. The precious day was coming to
an end.

They walked toward Tulane and Loyola under the shade of the giant
trees on St. Charles Avenue, then boarded the trolley for the ride back to
Ed's car.

"That woman, the opera singer, Sophie Lewis, talked about a place
called Storyville. You know it?" The name alone set her adrift. "Said her
father owned property."

"Fancy houses of prostitution. Jelly Roll Morton came up through there.
Louis Armstrong, too."

"Are the houses still there?" She stalled their departure for Mississippi.

"No, no. It's all gone. He maybe owned cribs, places where black women
worked. They had a few black women in the big houses, exotics. They even
had one black woman owned one of the fanciest houses in Storyville. I'll
drive you by where it used to be."

And he did. Back through the French Quarter, Rampart Street, the Treme, as he called it, St. Bernard Avenue and on to Gentilly, the city glossed by
because she couldn't focus on leaving it, on going back to the harsh, sand-grit
world of Pineyville.

Most of the ride back, she couldn't remember. She dozed all the way to
Mississippi and had no dreams of death.